The Crime and the Criminal Part 19

"For a strong man it has possibilities. You may take it from me that, properly backed, you are strong enough to be able to say, with truth, that few things are beyond your reach."

"I think myself that, given the opportunity, I might find the man."

"I think so too. You shall have the opportunity. You have heard on what conditions. That is what I wanted to say to you. We shall see you at c.o.c.kington at the end of the week. Perhaps, before you leave us, you may have something to say to me."

"I trust, sir, that I may have something to say to you that will be pleasant to us both."

CHAPTER XIII.

AN AFTERNOON CALL.

"You're sleeping it out. Are you going to lie in bed all day?"

I opened my eyes. I looked up. Somebody was shaking me--Archie Beaupre.

"You don't mean to say that you're awake? I admire your hours."

"Is it late?"

"I don't know what you call late. It's nearly one. Do you generally sleep to this time?"

"Made rather a night of it, my boy. It was five when I left the Climax."

"Oh, you went to the Climax, did you, after you left Jardine's? Win?"

"A trifle. What brings you here--starting in the early-calling line?"

Archie seated himself on the bed, murmuring--

"He calls this early."

Beaupre is the third son of the Duke of Glenlivet--one of the duke's famed thirteen. Not a bad sort--stone broke, like all the rest of us.

Archie was born in two different sections--one-half of him makes all for wickedness, and the other half makes all the other way--and, whichever half of him is to the fore, he's thorough. Jardine and I had found him in the drawing-room with Dora when we had finished our hobn.o.bbing--at which I was not sorry. When a man has had the sort of talk with the father which I had had, he is not, on the instant, all agog for a _tete-a-tete_ with the child. He wants to straighten things out inside his head a bit. We had left the Jardines together, Beaupre and I. He had gone to some twenty-third cousin of his great grandmother--the man's relations are as the sands of the sea for mult.i.tude, and he keeps in with every one of them--and I had gone on to the Climax Club. Now, I wondered what he wanted on my bed.

When Burton had brought me my coffee, and Archie had put himself outside a soda, tempered, he began.

"Don't laugh at me, old chap." Of course, when he told me not to laugh, I was at once upon the grin--it's human nature. But he went on, "I am a miserable wretch, I swear I am."

"Who says you aren't?"

"What a muck I've made of things!"

"Who denies it? Give me the rascal's name?"

"And I might have been a respectable chap once, if I had liked."

"My dear Archie! When?"

He was too woebegone to heed my chaff. He went and leaned his elbow on my mantelshelf, and his head upon his hand.

"Reggie, I've been thinking that you and I ought to cut the Jardines."

"The deuce, you have!"

"For their sake. It is not fair to them that we should let them run the risk of being contaminated by even a remote connection with the shadow which, I suppose sooner or later, is sure to fall on us. It will come specially hard on me--because I don't mind telling you, between ourselves, that Miss Jardine's society to me means much." I stared; things were coming out. "But the knowledge that this is so has come too late. Unless the whole business of the club--I won't give it a name, but you know the club which meets once a month in Horseferry Road--is a ghastly joke."

"That is what it is."

"What?"

"A ghastly joke."

Beaupre looked up at me. I don't know what he saw in my face, but a funny look came on his own--a look almost of fear.

"Sometimes, Townsend, I don't know if you're a man or a devil."

"The devil was a sublimated sort of man, and I expect he still is. This coffee is just a trifle too sweet."

It was my second cup. I was sitting up in bed and stirring it.

"Of course, you have done nothing."

He said "Of course"; but I saw he was uneasy.

"Of course, I have."

"Townsend!"

The man gave quite a jump. He brought the back of his head with a b.u.mp against the wall, without seeming to notice it.

"I hope, as I said, on Thursday to have the pleasure of returning the Honour of the Club with its scarlet a more vivid hue."

He was glaring at me as if I had been some sort of hideous wild animal.

"You don't mean that you have killed some one?"

"Certainly. What else should I mean? Though I don't perceive that there is any necessity for you to announce it from the tiles."

He staggered to a chair, plumping down in it with the stiffening all gone out of him.

I laughed.

"My dear Archie, you had better have another drink. You don't seem quite the thing."

He looked me straight in the face, I giving him look for look. When he had sustained my glance for a moment or two he shut his eyes and s.h.i.+vered. I saw a shudder go all over him. I drank my coffee.